Doing a federated search in AppSearch is a great place to start of you are still developing your topic.

How does the university library work?

Generally, the university library purchases or subscribes to all sorts of specialized information to support the research that happens in the various majors here at App State - research being done by both students and professors.

This information takes many forms: books, ebooks, streaming films, peer-reviewed journals (mostly online), and much more.

Because it supports the majors, the information is mostly organized by discipline or subject in our physical and online spaces.

In other words, all of our physical books about biology 'live' together on the shelves in Belk Library. And all of our online content about biology can accessed through our databases for biology available via Belk Library's website.

What's a library database?

Databases are searchable online collections of information that the library subscribes to. Because these are subscription-based, or "behind the paywall," this is information that only App State students and professors have access to. It's also helpful to know that some larger databases contain research from multiple disciplines.

What is APPsearch?

APPsearch is Belk Library's portal that allows students to search most of our research databases at one time. You can find it on our homepage. Think of it as "Google for the library" - it's a great place to start and is intended to save students time and effort. It allows you to quickly find and access books, ebooks, journal articles, and more. 

Click here to watch a video tutorial on how to use APPsearch.

Anatomy of an AppSearch Results Page

This is an interactive sample search from an AppSearch search results page. In this case, the search used the keywords, college student and anxiety. Click the "I" icons to learn more about the different parts of the page.

The "Find@ASU" Button

Once you're in APPsearch, you might notice this as a potential option to access the full-text of a source. The following interactive image offers some ideas of where you could end up.

But what if I want to find a book?

Finding a book using our online catalog is fairly straightforward. This video tutorial shows you how.